THE PRINCIPLE OF ASSOCIATIVE SYMMETRY

Abstract

DIRECTION is a pervasive property of experience and action. We experience events as temporally differentiated, as being earlier and later, and as functionally differentiated, in the sense that one leads to the other or causes it. The discrimination of direction is essential to the coherence of experience and action. Traditionally, the process of association has been invoked in explanation of the directed character of psychological events. One speaks of the formation of an association when two terms, a and b, have been experienced together, and when subsequently the appearance of one produces the recall of the other. Since recall frequently follows the order of original experience (from a to b), it seems that association is responsible both for the occurrence and for the order of recall. The concept of association has always referred to the mechanism that connects individual experiences